It’s hypocritical on the part as Turkish authorities to deny the political crisis in the country, with even Erdogan’s European allies criticizing for harsh measures at Taskim square, says RT contributor Afshin Rattansi.

RT: We've just heard from a Turkish MP, she denies this
is a political crisis. So what is it then?

Afshin Rattansi: Well, if thousands of people injured,
people dead on the streets of Taskim Square, running that square,
isn’t a political crisis, I’m not sure what is. Turkey has form
on this, and now we have a 24-hour deadline from Mr. Erdogan.
Gosh, his leadership started so well, and the whole world was
with him; now, you know, even the German foreign minister is
cautiously telling him, “Don’t start killing people in the
streets of Istanbul.” Remember, it’s like 78 out of 81 cities,
not just Istanbul and Ankara. These demonstrations are going
right across the country.

RT: What’s the nub of these demonstrations? Why are
they taking to the streets?
AR: Erdogan’s policies have been consistent with all the
kinds of Chicago School economics: the use of Lehman Brothers
collapse to clamp down, the OECD saying Turkey has the
second-highest rate of inequality of any OECD country, but it’s
now biding them because the Turkish Central Bank intervened to
support its currency.

As for the masses that are demonstrating, it is so far the middle
class, and because of the way the Turkish society is split,
Erdogan’s AK Party has half of the population on his side, but
how long can it last as he continues with the austerity
campaigns? Previously, Turkey was a CIA-backed coup in 1980, and
there was a massacre in Taskim Square in 1977. So we’ll have to
see whether all these people, all these myriad interests, can
actually do damage to the Erdogan’s government.
RT: How deep do cultural and ethnic
divisions run in Turkey?
AR: I wouldn’t say so much it’s ethnic, although I’d say that
Western media loves to portray it as mainly ethnic. There are
masses of inequality, and it’s out of that inequality and the
people that benefit will support the AK Party. But of course,
there is this latent Islamism. The thing about the Erdogan
government is that it is obviously censoring Twitter and
arresting people. Fifty-one people were killed in a Turkish town
just a month ago or so. And that could well have been Sunni
forces. But Erdogan is trying to stop anyone from finding out
more about that.

It’s the spillover of course of the Syrian intervention. Those
ethnic dimensions to what’s happening in Turkey are also going to
be particularly worrying for the Erdogan government and for the
protesters in Taskim Square.

RT: Are we seeing the Islamization of Turkey?
AR: I think the most important tool one can use to understand
the Turkish society is the liberal track. I mean think of the
Occupy movements right across the West, but in the case of
Turkey, because of its peculiar history, I mean, it ran most of
Europe for half a millennium, under Ottoman times. It would be
wrong to go too much on the Islamization path.

What we see here is the country basically is like Chile, except
for that there are powers that remain long after Allende left.
This is the CIA-backed country, and the army that run Turkey
could swing it, and the army have been so far relatively quiet,
and there are people in the AK Party themselves that are starting
to criticize it.
RT: Erdogan's agreed to meet the protesters
again - is that a sign he's wavering?

AR: Apparently, what I’m hearing is that the group that he
is purportedly meeting have nothing to do with the main movement
of the demonstrators in Taskim Square, so it’s actually more
Erdogan propaganda. We mustn’t forget that he is ordering the
police to beat people up. The number of head wounds, I mean, just
the idea of 3,000 people injured, and yet here’s this country
trying to get into the European Union and trying to talk about
the human rights in Syria.

The absurdity of any idea that Turkey is some modern democracy as
it tries to destroy the aspirations of half its population! Of
course, we’re hearing nothing from the Obama administration
whatsoever – that’s interesting in itself.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.